Lonely Tourist Charlotte Charles
by Roscuro
Summary: They called her the Lonely Tourist when she died, which was ironic: she had never much wanted for company, and her first journey was her last. Decades later, the nickname is finally appropriate. (Suppose when Ned makes people alive again, they remain forever as they were before they died.)


They called her the Lonely Tourist when she died, which was ironic as she had never much wanted for company prior to her death (how her aunts and bees and books had sufficed for so long!), and the only journey she ever undertook ended up being her last. In life, at least, and the fact that such a thing needs to be clarified would suggest that there was more to her than an ironic title.

For a time, they assumed that it was just the same good genes that manifested in her porcelain skin and her winning smile; some people just aged well. They became alarmed over Digby's apparent inability to grow old far sooner than hers. (When Digby turned thirty years old, there was a heated debate about whether or not they should submit him to the Guinness Book of World Records and knock Bluey—record holder since 1939 at twenty-nine years and five months—into second place, but in the end decided that the distinct lack of grey fur and arthritis would probably call the whole thing into question. Digby didn't seem to care either way.)

But that was the first crack in the dam holding back the floodwaters of epiphany. Chuck's crippling introspection took one look at Digby and kicked into action, forcing her to examine some truths she had been perfectly happy to ignore for years. Where Ned was accruing deep wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and along the shy lines of his mouth, her face remained smooth. Where Emerson's hair became a dignified salt-and-pepper color before rapidly progressing to salt alone, hers remained thick and as woodsy brown as ever. Where Olive eventually had to stop wearing her towering high heels to soothe her joints, Chuck stood tall and strong.

It wasn't until the botched mugging by a trigger-happy teenager that they knew for sure. Three gunshots to the chest and stomach weren't usually survivable, so when Chuck sat up the next day in the hospital, gasping for breath and clutching her scabbed-over wounds, it was called a miracle. Ned held her hand through a purple rubber glove and knew it was no miracle. He cried by her bedside and she wiped his tears away with her heavily starched sheets but had no words of comfort to give him.

In bringing her back to life, it seemed that Ned had stranded her there. This truth went from uncomfortable to irrefutable over the following years and decades. First she lost her aunts, who died within days of one another, Vivian of breast cancer and Lily of a broken heart, though Chuck was sure she would have denied that if given the chance. Then it was Emerson; a series of strokes decreased his quality of life until there wasn't a life anymore. Olive she heard about two years after her death; apparently, she went in her sleep peacefully. Somehow, that one hurt Chuck the most—after all of their adventures, she was accustomed to violent and tragic deaths taking people away. She was acutely unused to having to let go.

It was agonizing—robbed of her chance to see the world, Chuck had made her world out of her friends and her family, and now one by one it was narrowing down. She couldn't simply go back to her books and her bees anymore; those belonged to a child and she no longer fit into that world. But she had Ned, for a time, and even when he was old enough to be mistaken for her grandfather he still reminded her that she had a reason to live. And if ever she got too maudlin about the tragedy of her immortality, she just remembered that her father was likely cursed in the same way, but without her youth and wholeness. He never resurfaced after stealing Ned's car and disappearing to destinations unknown. It was probably for the best. She wished him well.

When Ned finally died in a hospice bed after a prolonged struggle with Alzheimer's (seventeen years, three months, twenty-two days, ten hours, and two seconds ago; Chuck never stopped keeping count), she pulled off her glove for a moment, staring at his liver-spotted skin with all of the affection she had ever held for it, and considered holding his hand for the first time. Considered kissing his cheek. _It's symmetrical_ , Ned had once said. Then she put the glove on and stood, leaving only a bit of plastic wrap in his pocket to remember her by.

On her way out, Chuck bid goodbye to the nurses who had gotten to know her as Ned's granddaughter. Toward the end, Ned had also known her as his granddaughter, though he had never been able to move on from her long enough to have a family. She wished he had been selfish enough to actually have grandchildren, to have _someone_ who could hold his hand without wearing a glove as he died, who would sit by his bed and weep over him because he was gone and would never come back. But he did not. He had her, and then he was gone.

After, she went to her small apartment—packed with books, of course, but what was the point of spacious living if no one was with her?—collected her bags and a mournful Digby, and made her way to the nearest port with a pet-friendly cruise. It was time she finally saw the world, she figured. Her friends and family had sufficed, but now they were gone. That world was over and could never be regained. (How could she make friends when all of this would only happen again? She would love them and outlive them. Her heart was too big for that, too fragile, so she blocked off only enough of it for Digby to claim and pretended the rest didn't hurt her.)

Her new world would not be people, or bees, or books. She didn't know what it would be. But she intended to find out.

So, if you're ever on a trip to some exotic locale and you see a pretty brunette in a brightly colored dress and oversized sunglasses, take a second look. If there is a golden retriever by her side with eyes too old and sad for his age, take note. That is the Lonely Tourist Charlotte Charles, and for the first time since she became alive again, that nickname is appropriate. You cannot be her friend, but she will always welcome friendliness; I recommend taking her someplace where you can get pie. Don't forget to give the dog a slice (it won't hurt him). It's never exactly what she wants—any pie but the one she preserves in her memory will be disappointing—but as long as the slice lasts, she won't be lonely, and she won't be a tourist. She will smell of warm crust and sticky filling, and her eyes will be sweet as honey, and she'll be home.


End file.
